The Poisoned Chalice Of In Vitro Fertilization

“Reproductive technology” is fraught with moral problems, including practices, that should never arise. They occur because some clinicians have determined that they can treat infertility by manipulation. Rather than diagnosing the cause of infertility and getting to the root of the problem in an ethical way, in vitro fertilization practitioners chose years ago to respond to the emotionally draining problems facing barren couples by using a laboratory to “make” children.

The expectation then, as now, is to create embryonic babies, choose the best ones for implantation, hope the process works the first time and charge exorbitant fees. When there are “leftover” embryonic people, they are often either frozen or given to science to be killed so that human embryonic research can be carried out.

On the other hand, if these children are deemed in some way “defective” after pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is used, they are killed in the laboratory. If they are all the wrong sex, then the couple may opt to try again—allowing these children to be killed and putting more money into the pockets of the doctors by attempting the procedure again.

It’s a lucrative racket for sure.

But one would think that anyone with a logical mind would discern that there’s something wrong with the whole scenario. So why do so few discuss or admit that this documented treachery exists?

In Great Britain, when two children were born after IVF treatment, and were apparently created using the wrong sperm, their parents sued. The children have darker skin than their white parents and, according to their mother, have been subjected to ridicule and name-calling. However, a judge ruled that the case had no merit and that “the children had no legitimate expectation other than being born healthy and well.” He also stated, “The presence of persons sufficiently misguided and cruel as to issue racist comments directed to these children is no basis for a conclusion that they are somehow damaged.” Thus the parents will not receive remuneration for personal injury even though the wrong sperm was used.

In New York, a woman was recently granted permission to harvest sperm from her dead husband. She claimed she did not want the death of her husband to stand in the way of their desire to start a family.

As if such macabre events were not enough to convince establishment repro-tech experts that there has to be a better way to treat infertility, we now know that children conceived through in vitro fertilization have a higher rate of genetic abnormalities and suffer a greater number of overall health problems than naturally conceived children. Such evidence of the pitfalls inherent in such practices has been increasing with the passage of each year. But this has not slowed the multi-million dollar industry.

As one mother admitted in a heart-wrenching exposé on the emotional toll IVF and other such practices can take on the family unit,

Medical technology has made me a mother, and my amazing son is living proof of how mind-blowing science truly is. At the same time, IVF technology and the hope it proffers have driven a stake through the very heart of my life. I have a son but I also have a divorce to my name, a string of lost or radically altered friendships, and the emotional scars of years of medical intervention. Society would call me churlish for saying it, because I got my ‘prize,’ but the relentless pursuit of fertility has been a poisoned chalice.

Clearly the reproductive technology business is fraught with pain, agony, death and enormous financial cost to families. So why does it continue unabated? It’s all about the money, the denial that anything could possibly go wrong and the quest to replace God with the gods who wear white laboratory coats and feel no remorse.

The real barrenness in the quest for domination over man and manipulation of his genes resides in the hearts of those who will not stop, no matter what the human cost.

THE SOLUTION: Such diabolical events need not ever occur. There is an ethical treatment of infertility. It is called NaProTECHNOLOGY. Based on the truth that nature and procreation can work together even in face of infertility, this is the wave of the future—the new face of hope.